With the movie having ended in multiple fashions, director Mikael Håfström breaks down the reasons behind 1408‘s multiple endings and which is his favorite. The 2007 horror movie served as an adaptation of Stephen King’s short story of the same name, in which skeptical supernatural investigative author Mike Enslin ignores a warning to not stay in the titular room at a fictional New York hotel, only to discover it to be far more haunted than he imagined. Led by John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, 1408 earned largely positive reviews, finding further success on home media, where three alternate endings were revealed.
During a recent interview with The Kingscast, Håfström reflected on his experience bringing King’s 1408 to life with the 2007 movie. When asked about the alternate endings and reports of poor test screenings, the director quickly debunked those reports, revealing the various endings came from a desire to “experiment“ during the additional photography stage of shooting, and that the theatrical ending was ultimately his favorite. See what Håfström explained below:
We can debunk [the ending was changed due to test screenings]. We shot the film, and we shot it with the ending that ended up being the theatrical ending. While we were doing it in post, we were doing some additional photography, and I remember talking to Bob Weinstein at the time, and we said, “Maybe, for fun, we can experiment and do an alternative ending to see how that does.” I don’t know all the details now, but it was not that it didn’t test well, that ending. It had nothing to do with that. “Let’s try, let’s try it out.” So, we shot the ending when Sam Jackson comes to the funeral, and he has the stuff, and he suddenly sees Enslin in the rearview mirror, and it’s this great jump scare.
I think that we were after something a little scarier, and then we end up in New York, and we see the deceased Enslin as another ghost in the room, and he hears his daughter’s voice, and they walk out. It’s kind of neat, and had a really good jump scare. We tested it, and the audience were jumping out of their seats when Enslin is sitting in the back seat. But, we came to the conclusion — and the audience helped us to come to the conclusion — that the emotional ending was more rewarding. That’s what they wanted, and that’s what I wanted, too, and that’s what we all wanted, that ending when he sits with the tape recorder and hears his daughter’s voice, and [Mary McCormack’s Lily] hears it too.
It was stronger, and much more emotional. The other one was worse, it had a couple of good moments, but this was more right for the film, so that’s where we ended it. We chose to keep the original ending, and then when they made the DVD, one of the DVDs, they called it the Director’s Cut, and they put the alternate ending, and some deleted scenes and stuff. So, it was not a big conflict, or the audience hated this or that, it was a matter of what way to go, and how to balance it out. I think we came to the right decision when it came to the theatrical version of the film.
1408’s Various Endings Explained (& How They Compare To King’s Short Story)
As previously noted, 1408‘s home media release revealed there to be four different endings to the King adaptation, with the theatrical showing Cusack’s Mike having survived setting the room on fire and reconciling with his ex-wife, whose skepticism of his experience is shattered when they find his tape recorder with a voice of their late daughter’s spirit. One of the three alternate endings largely followed the same beat, though Lily ultimately didn’t hear Katie’s voice. It was 1408‘s alternate endings where things took a shift as both resulted in Mike’s death.
The first 1408 alternate ending saw Mike die in the fire that burned the room down, with Jackson’s Olin delivering Mike’s effects to Lily at his funeral, only to be turned away and listen to Mike’s tape recorder in his car and hear Katie’s voice, being suddenly scared by Mike’s burned corpse appearing in the backseat. It then cuts to Mike’s spirit walking out of the room with his daughter after assessing the damage. The other ending leaves out the funeral, but instead sees his publisher sorting through Mike’s effects and discovering the voice recorder and manuscript, gearing up to spread the room’s story to the world.
While the general structure of Mike setting the room on fire to escape is fairly true to the source material, 1408 is ultimately largely different from King’s short story, not only in its plot progression, but also the outcome of its various endings. In the short, Mike becomes both physically and psychologically traumatized by his experiences with the room and believes that it was inhabited by an inhuman entity, now sleeping with the lights on, removes all his house’s phones, and always draws the curtains before dark. Despite the differences, given the movie also fleshed out Mike’s backstory, the theatrical 1408 ending does largely ring true to the story that preceded it.
Source: The Kingscast
